


Counterparts and Bleeding Hearts

by dustyfluorescent



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:25:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2049840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyfluorescent/pseuds/dustyfluorescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint can't sleep. Bucky can't sleep. They run into each other in the kitchen at two in the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterparts and Bleeding Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you're like "yes, this is a good pairing" and then you're like "oh no, there's extremely little fanfiction with this pairing" and then you're like "I need to write some fanfiction with this pairing" and that's when this kind of stuff happens.
> 
> Title from Chasing Rainbows by Shed Seven. I have a whole playlist for these two now. It's good.

They run into each other in the kitchen at two in the morning.

It’s late-night-early-morning when Clint kicks his way out of another fucking nightmare after no more than an hour of sleep. He’s breathing hard, covered in cold sweat, can’t really drag his mind out of the cold and blue nightmare world, and his room is too full of nothing and it’s making it harder to breathe. The relentless rain is beating at the windows, all around them a thundering cold wall. It’s dark and somehow the darkness is colder and more hostile than usual, and Clint really doesn’t need this now.

With a sigh and a groan at his aching muscles, Clint rolls out of bed. He won’t get any more sleep tonight, not feeling like he feels, like his insides are choking each other in rolling waves of panic and horror, heart beating its way out of his chest, cold, clammy hands shaking like they usually never do. He needs to get out of his bed, out of his room, out. Maybe up on the roof, and fuck if he cares about the rain, it might even feel good. Cleansing, distracting, whatever. 

He grabs a random t-shirt to go with his boxers before stepping out into the dark hallway and heads for the kitchen. A glass of water first, or maybe a beer if there are any left. He sighs, wills his heart to beat slower. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t ever fucking work.

The lights are on in the kitchen, pale light painting the floor blue, and Clint feels sick. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or annoyed that somebody is already up. It’s not unusual - they all have their share of issues to keep them up at night - but recently he’s not had company at this hour. Clint wants to be alone (Clint doesn’t want anybody to see him like this because Clint is not very fond of showing weakness in front of his super-fucking-human team where he’s already the underdog by default) but he knows it’s probably good that he doesn’t have to be. 

It’s Bucky. He’s leaning against the sink with hair falling over his face, shoulders straining with tension. He’s not been living in the tower for long and Clint doesn’t really know him that well but he knows enough about him not to jump him, so he leans against the doorframe and runs his hand through his hair, weary, sluggish. 

“Hi,” he says quietly, and the way Bucky jumps and lashes out before noticing him and stepping back, breathing hard with wild eyes, Clint is grateful he wasn’t standing any closer.

“Hi,” Bucky says, looking down. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Clint says. “Been there.”

Bucky barks out a dry laugh, like it would be funny if he wasn’t so fucking _done_. Clint knows the feeling. Intimately.

“No,” he says. “Really.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Bucky says. He passes Clint a glass of water and Clint nods his thanks before downing it. He leans against the counter and closes his eyes and counts to ten. 

“Weather’s nice,” Bucky says with a sarcastic edge to his voice. Clint likes his voice. It’s grounding.

Clint snorts. “Yeah, isn’t it.” He goes to check the fridge. There’s beer, thank fuck for that. He’s probably going to have one. Maybe two, if he’s perfectly honest. “I was actually gonna go sit on the roof so I could get pneumonia and hopefully die. Maybe then I’d get some fucking sleep.”

Bucky laughs. “Wanna play Mario Kart instead?”

Clint smiles wryly. “Why the fuck not. It’s not like I have anything better to do, anyway.” 

Bucky is surprisingly good at Mario Kart for a fella who grew up in the roaring twenties, but then again, it’s not like Clint’s childhood was all about video games either. He never touched a controller until he was a grown-ass man working for S.H.I.E.L.D., to be perfectly honest, but it’s still a bit embarrassing getting his ass whipped by a walking fossil. He tells Bucky as much, and Bucky throws a cushion at him. Clint laughs and kicks him in the shin and flips him off and they go again, batting friendly insults between them as they play.

They do a few rounds before Clint sets his controller down with a sigh. It’s nearing three in the morning. He’s tired to his bones, wants to go to bed, but he knows it’s pretty much useless to hope he might still get some sleep tonight. When he closes his eyes everything goes blue and it gets hard to breathe. His cold pale horror world is creeping just beyond his reach, ready to jump him at any turn.

He rubs his face and swears under his breath. _You have heart._ A lump in his throat. Yeah, a fuckload of good that has done him over the years.

“You ok?” Bucky asks quietly. 

“Not really.” He gets up and tries to breathe. “Fancy some range time?”

“Sniper bonding.”

“Yeah.”

Bucky smirks. “You’re on.” Clint stares at him and wonders how it took him so long to notice, really notice, how good-looking Bucky is.

He’s even better looking when he’s shooting, as it turns out. Clint tells himself he’s not going to do anything about it, Steve would probably have him for breakfast if he did, but then Bucky crowds him against the wall and kisses him in a way that is unexpectedly tender compared to the flex of metal fingers at his hip, and Clint decides it’s not really his fault and Steve can honestly shove it if he has a problem with this. Bucky follows Clint to bed and they hold each other, legs tangled together, just looking, just _there_. Clint strokes Bucky’s hair off his face and if his fingers stay to rest on his neck, thumb gently drawing circles against his skin, neither of them mentions it. 

They fall asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing, Bucky’s pulse steady and grounding under Clint’s fingers. There are no nightmares.

When Clint wakes up - well-rested for the first time in a very long time, and that’s really a bit disorienting - he’s alone. It still smells like Bucky, though, and the sheets are warm where he was lying, so Clint assumes he probably noticed Clint was waking up and slipped away to avoid unnecessary awkwardness. That’s what Clint would have done if he’d been the one to wake up first. He has a tendency to run away from emotions, and he’s not really surprised that Bucky might be the same. He tells himself it doesn’t bother him. (It kind of bothers him a bit.)

They don’t talk about it. It’s not like that, anyway. They both just needed someone to hold, and the kiss was just. It was something. Reassuring. A permission. A mutual agreement. Clint isn’t sure what it was, except nice. Nothing more, except for the way it makes him feel when he thinks about it, thinks about the feel of metal on his hip, clutching tight, through the fabric of his clothing. What might have happened next if the circumstances had been slightly different.

It’s not like that. It’s not.

And okay, fine, it might be a bit like that, but he can’t be sure it’s not just him, so he uses the classic Barton method for resolving the issue: avoiding Bucky and absolutely not talking about it.

Not until the next time, anyway.

Clint wakes up to a mix of memories recent and past, wakes up flinching away from a raised fist, wakes up to a sceptre pressing against his heart, so cold it makes his blood freeze.

The light in the kitchen is as blue as ever, and Clint should really ask Tony to do something about it except that he really doesn’t want to. What Clint wants is to throw up and maybe things will be better. What Clint wants is to get blinding drunk. To make things easier. To make them worse. He hates getting drunk because he feels like when he does he did it because he didn’t have a choice. His body just moved on its own. (Like dad. He’s like dad. He doesn’t want to be.)

And then Bucky’s there, leaning in the doorway, muttering a quiet “hi” like Clint did the last time, and when Clint looks at him he smiles, sheepish, shrugs. 

That’s really all the talking they do, but it might be enough. 

They skip the video games and shooting and go straight to bed. The kiss is less of a question mark this time around, the metal hand on Clint’s hip a bit more demanding. Bucky’s hair falls over his face as he straddles Clint, grabs his hair with his free hand, kisses him like he’s done asking questions and he’s here to tell Clint things. Clint has no objections. He relishes the burn in his scalp, the heat in his groin, the tingling all over, and lets Bucky know what he wants, too.

They don’t fall asleep as easily this time. That’s okay. They need to get used to the way things have shifted a bit between them, and neither of them is very good at talking. Because now it’s definitely like that, sweaty and sticky and a bit shaky because it’s new, and maybe it was a bit unexpected despite everything, but it’s good. It’s definitely good. 

They get cleaned up and go to the range because if there’s something they both have in common it’s that shooting at things calms them down. Levels of fucked up that implies are not going to be explored at this point in time. There are other things. More urgent.

They have a shoot-off. Clint wins. He feels smug about it until Bucky pins him to the wall so tight he has no chance of getting away on his own and he remembers again that he’s just a guy with good aim, and just because Bucky’s a sniper doesn’t mean he isn’t a fuckload of other things, too. A full-body weapon with a bionic arm to crack it up a notch. 

And then Bucky kisses him again and Clint finds he doesn’t mind being pinned against the wall at all, that it’s actually quite a good place to be. 

Making out in a shooting range in the middle of the night. A ridiculous teenage fantasy, and yet something about it is really fucking spectacular.

The second time they go to bed they try to go to sleep. It’s not as easy as that, obviously. Clint dozes off for a second just to jump awake with his heart beating too fast and someone chasing him just outside his reach. Bucky holds him tighter. He never fell asleep in the first place, Clint can tell. 

“Are we gonna talk about this?” Clint asks once his breathing has got back to normal, because apparently he’s all grown up now and what the fuck, or maybe he’s a bit disoriented, half-asleep, sleep-deprived. Whatever.

“Can’t we just let it happen?” Bucky says quietly.

“I guess.”

“It’s good. I like you. I think you’re probably good for me. What do you wanna talk about?”

Clint cringes. Good point. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m probably just not used to things being that easy, like, ever.”

“I don’t think it’s easy.”

Clint thinks about it for a bit, revels in the sensation of Bucky carding his fingers through his hair, fists the fabric of his t-shirt and tries to relax. He tangles their legs together, to be closer, to be less exposed. He’s wide awake now, despite the numb ache of exhaustion behind his eyes. 

“Yeah, I guess not,” he says. 

“Just not sure it needs talking about, is all.”

Clint turns his head to press a kiss over Bucky’s heart. Bucky’s fingers stop moving for a fraction of second, and then he sighs and hugs Clint closer.

“If I fall asleep”, Clint starts, and then lets the sentence fall into oblivion because he’s not quite ready to sound as needy as he was about to. 

“I won’t leave,” Bucky whispers. 

And yeah, they probably don’t have to think about it. It’s pretty self-explanatory, really, what they’re doing here. It’s good. They like each other, and it’s probably good for them. To have someone who understands, even a little, and doesn’t mind. 

This time it’s Bucky who falls asleep, Bucky who has a nightmare, Clint who has to wake him up, hold him after, hush away the apologies and kiss the racing heart steady. It’s not a magic fix, these things never are, but they’re not alone and that’s what makes it good. Makes it not magic but maybe the next best thing. 

They wake up next to each other, to a warm bed and a tired smile, to a gentle kiss and something like comfort. They go to make coffee together. The kitchen in daylight isn’t blue at all, and it’s full of assorted Avengers, but if anybody takes note of Bucky standing close to Clint, his metal hand gently resting on Clint’s hip, they have the good grace not to mention it. 

Not quite yet, anyway.


End file.
